wanted to prevent things from getting out of control but felt powerless to do anything.
By this time, Herbert’s wife had started saying loudly, “I’m not going to leave you.”
Herbert had made a peculiar request the week before the execution. He said that if he was
executed as scheduled, he wanted me to get the prison to play a recording of a hymn, “The
Old Rugged Cross,” as he walked to the electric chair. I had been slightly embarrassed to raise
the request when I spoke with prison officials, but to my utter amazement they had agreed to
do it.
I remembered as a child that they always sang this hymn at somber moments during
church services, on Communion Sundays, and Good Friday. It was sad like few other hymns
I’d heard. I don’t know why exactly, but I started to hum it as I saw more uniformed officers
enter the vestibule outside the visitation room. It seemed like something that might help. But
help what?
After a few minutes, the family joined me. I went over to Herbert’s wife as she held him
tightly, sobbing softly. I whispered to her, “We have to let him go.” Herbert saw the officers
lining up outside, and he pulled away from her slowly and told me to take her out of the
room.
Herbert’s wife clung to me and sobbed hysterically as I led her out of the visitation room
with her family tearfully following. The experience was heartbreaking, and I wanted to cry.
But I just kept humming instead.
The prison had made arrangements for me to go back to the death chamber in about an
hour to be with Herbert before the execution. Although I had worked on several death
penalty cases with clients who had execution dates, I’d never before been present at an
execution. In the cases where I had actually been counsel for the condemned while I was in
Georgia, we’d always won stays of execution. I grew anxious thinking about witnessing the
spectacle of a man being electrocuted, burned to death in front of me. I’d been so focused on
obtaining the stay and then on what to say to Herbert when I got to the prison that I hadn’t
actually thought about witnessing the execution. I no longer wanted to be there for that, but I
didn’t want to abandon Herbert. To leave him in a room alone with people who wanted him
dead made me realize that I couldn’t back out. All of a sudden the room felt incredibly hot,
like there was no air anywhere. The visitation officer came up to me after I had escorted the
family out and whispered in my ear, “Thank you.” I was vexed by her thinking of me as an
accomplice and didn’t know what to say.
When there were less than thirty minutes before the execution, they took me back to the
cell next to the execution chamber deep inside the prison where they were holding Herbert
until it was time to put him in the electric chair. They had shaved the hair off his body to
facilitate a “clean” execution. The state had done nothing to modify the electric chair since
the disastrous Evans execution. I thought about the botched execution of Horace Dunkins a
month earlier and became even more distraught. I had tried to read up on what should
happen at an execution; I had some misguided thought that I could intervene if they did
something incorrectly.
Herbert was much more emotional when he saw me than he’d been in the visitation room.
He looked shaken, and it was clear that he was upset. It must have been humiliating to be
shaved in preparation for an execution. He looked worried, and when I walked into the